School of Pharmacy, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10051, Taiwan.
Department of Pharmacy, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei 10051, Taiwan.
J Proteome Res. 2021 Jul 2;20(7):3508-3518. doi: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00147. Epub 2021 May 31.
Recently, the gut microbiota has been found to be associated with many diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, depression, Parkinson's disease, cancer, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Among various gut microbiota-derived metabolites (GMs), short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), bile acids (BAs), and tryptophan (TRP) metabolites are the most frequently discussed metabolites. LC-MS/MS shows advantages in quantifying the levels of metabolites with good sensitivity and selectivity; however, the poor ionization efficiency and polar characteristics of SCFAs make their analysis challenging, especially when analyzing plasma samples with low SCFA concentrations. Moreover, without characteristic fragment ions for unconjugated BAs and different detection ion modes for TRP metabolites and BAs, GM analysis is complex and time-consuming. To overcome these problems, we developed a derivatization method combined with LC-MS/MS to enhance the sensitivity and LC retention of GMs. Through derivatization with 3-nitrophenylhydrazine (3-NPH), 7 SCFAs, 9 bile acids, and 6 tryptophan metabolites can be simultaneously analyzed via separation within 14 min on a reversed-phase C18 column. For accurate quantification, C-3NPH-labeled standards were used as one-to-one internal standards. This derivatization approach was optimized and then validated. We further applied this method to investigate the targeted GM profile in patients with CVD. The results showed a significant reduction in plasma butyrate levels in CVD patients compared with healthy controls, suggesting its potentially protective role in CVD. In summary, this work provides a sensitive and effective LC-MS/MS method for simultaneously quantifying gut microbiota-related metabolites in human plasma, which could benefit various future gut microbiota-related studies.
最近,人们发现肠道微生物群与许多疾病有关,如炎症性肠病、抑郁症、帕金森病、癌症、代谢综合征和心血管疾病(CVD)。在各种肠道微生物群衍生的代谢物(GMs)中,短链脂肪酸(SCFAs)、胆汁酸(BAs)和色氨酸(TRP)代谢物是最常讨论的代谢物。LC-MS/MS 在定量具有良好灵敏度和选择性的代谢物水平方面具有优势;然而,SCFAs 的电离效率差和极性特征使其分析具有挑战性,特别是在分析 SCFA 浓度低的血浆样品时。此外,由于未共轭 BAs 没有特征性的碎片离子,并且 TRP 代谢物和 BAs 的检测离子模式不同,GM 分析复杂且耗时。为了克服这些问题,我们开发了一种衍生化方法,结合 LC-MS/MS 以提高 GM 的灵敏度和 LC 保留。通过与 3-硝基苯肼(3-NPH)衍生化,9 种胆汁酸和 6 种色氨酸代谢物可以在反相 C18 柱上在 14 分钟内实现分离和同时分析。为了进行准确的定量,使用 C-3NPH 标记的标准品作为一对一的内标。对衍生化方法进行了优化和验证。我们进一步将该方法应用于研究 CVD 患者的靶向 GM 谱。结果表明,与健康对照组相比,CVD 患者的血浆丁酸盐水平显著降低,表明其在 CVD 中具有潜在的保护作用。总之,本工作提供了一种灵敏有效的 LC-MS/MS 方法,用于同时定量人血浆中与肠道微生物群相关的代谢物,这将有益于未来各种与肠道微生物群相关的研究。
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